Meteor alights night sky with sonic boom in Gilgit

GILGIT: In various parts of Gilgit-Baltistan region a large meteor witnessed barreled through the night sky, ARY News reported on Thursday.

The celestial body alighted the night sky in the region on around 9:00 on Wednesday night, the information department of the regional government claimed.

The thunderous boom heard in the areas from Gilgit to Shandur with a fireball. However, there were no reports of landfall of the meteor in the region.

A meteor is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space, significantly smaller than asteroids, and range in size from small grains to a meter-wide object.

When a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere at a great speed, aerodynamic heating of that object produces a streak of light, both from the glowing object and the trail of glowing particles that it leaves in its wake. This phenomenon is called a meteor or “shooting star”.

An estimated 15,000 tonnes of meteoroids, micro-meteoroids and different forms of space dust enter Earth’s atmosphere each year.